In 2011, John Paul's former private secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, gave the local Abruzzo community some of the late pontiff's blood as a token of the love he had felt for the mountainous area.

It was put in a gold and glass circular case and kept in a niche of the mountain church of San Pietro della Ienca, near the city of L'Aquila.

Ms Corrieri said the incident felt more like a "kidnapping" than a theft.

"In a sense, a person has been stolen," she said.

She said she could not say if the intention of the thieves may have been to seek a ransom for the blood.

Apart from the reliquary and a crucifix, nothing else was stolen from the isolated church, even though Ms Corrieri said the thieves would probably have had time to take other objects during the night-time theft.

Some of John Paul's blood was saved after an assassination attempt that nearly killed him in St Peter's Square on May 13, 1981.